For some national office staff members, January marks more than the beginning of a new year. Starting this month, the membership services and education services staffs officially adopted new names. Membership services became academic and membership affairs and education services became educational affairs.

Those two changes led to an additional change. The Governance, Membership, Education and Research Services group – which is comprised of the two newly renamed units as well as the governance and research units – is now Membership and Student-Athlete Affairs.

The changes are essentially in name only. All four units within MSAA will continue to provide the same types and levels of service. However, the group’s senior leadership team thinks the new titles more accurately and clearly describes what they do and the constituencies they serve. More specifically, the belief is that the new names better reflect the broad scope of the group’s responsibilities. In addition, exchanging the term “services” for “affairs” in all three titles introduces nomenclature within the national office with which member institutions are familiar.

Kevin Lennon, vice president for academic and membership affairs, said the impetus for the change was rooted in a general misunderstanding of what that unit does. The change also was sparked, in part, by the unit’s heavy involvement in the recent academic reform movement. Lennon said the new name reinforces the idea of the NCAA as a higher education organization and emphasizes the importance of supporting the activities of member institutions and conferences.

Overall, Bernard Franklin, executive vice president for membership and student-athlete affairs, believes the new titles not only help the membership better grasp what goes on in all four units of MSAA but also reflects the group’s primary constituencies of member institutions and student-athletes.

MSAA’s four units have been integrated for about four years now. These days, teams of individuals representing each MSAA unit work together to address governance and legislative issues. That was not necessarily the case when Franklin took over the group after joining the national office staff five years ago. At that time, academic and membership affairs (then membership services), research and governance had just been clustered together under one administrative umbrella. The group formerly known as education services was still a separate entity.

“What I think was both a challenge and an opportunity was that there was no playbook, there were no files to say this is how these three areas work together,” said Franklin, who immediately appointed a working group with representatives from each unit to study the best way to integrate the areas. Teaming up representatives from each MSAA unit was one critical result of the concentrated focus on integration.

“Before, while that may have taken place, I don’t know that it was intentional. Now it’s very intentional that these teams work together to support each other around a number of issues as it relates to the governance of the three divisions,” Franklin said. “The collaboration and coordination can only better serve the membership.”